


What Happened on Mindoir

by spectacledotter



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Origin Story, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectacledotter/pseuds/spectacledotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diana Shepard is sixteen, biotic, and living on Mindoir with her mother and brother Wesley. The worst thing in her future is her beloved brother leaving to join the Alliance--until batarian slavers raid the colony, and her entire life is upended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happened on Mindoir

Hannah Shepard checked the ever-updating chore list on the VI panel in the kitchen. So far everything was going smoothly--except for three red lines. Diana’s morning chores.

“Wesley!” she yelled out the kitchen window. “Go find your sister!”

“As you wish,” Wesley called back from the repulsorlift he was working on. He deactivated his omni-tool and headed off to the woods. Diana always was in the woods.

Sure enough, there she was, up in a tree. The blue glow of her biotics making the leaves float around her was a dead giveaway.

“Come on, Di,” he said, standing beneath her, arms folded. “You can’t sneak off here before chores are done or Mom’ll have your ass, you know that.”

“I woke up this morning and my implant was itchy,” she replied, adding another leaf to the levitating DNA strand she was working on. “So I came out here to relieve the pressure, you know?”

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Only if I don’t use it. It’s like the energy builds up.” She looked down at him, black hair falling over a blue eye. “I wish Mom let me use it to work.”

“Yeah, well, you know her. ‘It isn’t fair to the other kids,’ and all that.”

“She thinks I’m a freak,” said Diana flatly.

“She doesn’t,” countered Wesley. “Mom just needs to … adjust.”

Diana swung down from the tree branch, her body glowing with blue light, slowing her fall and softening the landing. Wesley whistled. “That’s a gift, Di. I’ll talk to Mom for you. If using your biotics will help you feel better, I’m sure she’ll let you.”

His sister sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when you leave.”

He put his arm around her as they walked back to the colony grounds. “You’ll be fine. I’ll send vidmails whenever I can. How about a shirt from Arcturus Station?”

“‘My brother joined the Alliance and all I got was this lousy T-shirt,’” she laughed. So did he.

“You could always join too,” he said. “The Alliance has training especially for biotics. And you’re always staring at the stars--why not live there?”

“And leave Mom all alone? She’d never let me.”

“There are other people in the colony. Think about it. You’ve got two years until you’re old enough.”

She gave him a smile through her hair. “Yeah. I’ll think about it.”

“Now come on,” said Wesley, “before Mom blows a gas--”

He was interrupted by a very loud, very near explosion.

“The fuck was that?!” cried Diana. Wesley automatically flung his arm in front of her protectively.

“There’ve been rumours about batarian slave raids in the cluster,” he said to her. “It could have been just equipment malfunction, but it sounded closer to--”

“Home,” Diana finished breathlessly, and she shoved his arm aside and ran for the colony.

“DIANA!” Wesley ran after her.

The colony was already in flames when they arrived. More explosions when the fire reached the gas mains. They could hear the screams and the gunfire, and an electric sound that made Diana sick to hear it. Cages.

Wesley caught up to her, holding her back and against the plastic wall of the moduhouse. “Shh. Don’t panic.”

“We have to find Mom,” Diana hissed at him.

He quickly looked around, taking stock, then jerked his head at the window down the wall. “I can lift you up into there. See if you can find Mom.” She nodded and he, taking her arm, led her down the wall. Diana was breathing deeply; a centering technique she’d learned to control her biotics. When they were beneath the window, he helped her up into it--his hands formed a step for her foot, and he lifted her up.

She rolled over into the room she and her brother shared. The furniture was sparse--it was a frontier colony after all--but they’d added their own decorations. Recruitment posters from the Alliance. A map of the galaxy with pins where human worlds were. A picture of their father, who had died from a freak epidemic that had swept the colony a few years before. Now, Diana hurried into the hallway. “Mom?”

There was no response. The small modular house was eerily, suspiciously quiet. She crept down the hall and peered around the corner. “Mo--MOM!” The word came out as a scream.

Her mother lay dead on the floor, the sidearm she kept in a drawer in her hand--and bullet wounds in her chest. Blood everywhere.

Diana stood frozen, pale, trembling uncontrollably. Wesley found her soon. “Oh God, Mom…”

“I heard noise in here!” said a batarian voice outside. Both siblings glanced at the doorway.

Wesley took his sister’s shoulders in his hands. “Diana, listen to me. You need to get out of here, back through that window, and run for the woods. Don’t stop, don’t look back. You have your omni-tool? Call for help. You know the Alliance patrol number.”

“What will you do?” she asked, choking back tears.

“I’ll come find you as soon as I can. I promise. I’m going to try holding these guys off. Maybe get some others to safety. But you can’t stay here. Promise me you’ll run. Promise.”

“I promise,” said Diana. Impulsively, she hugged him. “I love you, Wes.”

He gave her a quick squeeze. “Love you too, Di. I’ll see you soon.”

Then he went for the pistol on the floor, and she went for the window. As soon as she got to her room, she heard gunfire down the hall. So she jumped out the window and ran--and ran--and didn’t look back.

#

The wreckage of Mindoir was brutal, thought David Anderson. Nightmare stuff. And the batarians had made off with more than a few colonists before the Alliance was able to stamp them out completely. The small patrol that had at first answered the distress call wasn’t nearly enough to put up a proper fight. It was pure luck that the Einstein had been close enough to help. He looked around the burnt-out shell of a house he’d entered; there were batarian and human bodies on the floor. A woman and a teenage boy with dark hair. Poor kid.

“Commander!” One of the lieutenants looked in.

“What is it, Zabaleta?”

“You won’t believe this--we’re getting a signal from the forest. It’s an SOS area-wide signal--from an omni-tool.”

Anderson had to force himself not to stare. “Someone’s still alive out there.”

“Must have run to the woods to escape the batarians.”

“Can you track the signal?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve already got it on the map.”

They went a good ways into the woods from the colony--the trees closed in on all sides. Zabaleta swore they were following the signal, but Anderson was beginning to think it was a malfunction.

Until a sudden surge of biotic energy came down from a tree and knocked them flat. When Anderson looked up, a teenage girl was standing there, her clothes muddy and ripped and her hair in her face, holding a large stick. “Who are you?” she demanded. There was panic in her voice.

The survivor.

“I’m Commander David Anderson,” he said, standing up, his hands raised. “This is Lieutenant Ernesto Zabaleta. We’re from the Alliance.”

She stared at them for a long minute. “You’re Alliance…?” The stick dropped. “Where is Wesley? Where’s everyone else?”

“I’m sorry, child. You’re the only survivor we’ve found.”

She fell to her knees. “I’m…”

Anderson had never heard such a broken-sounding sob in his life. He knelt before her and pulled the girl to him, holding her close, letting her cry muddily into his uniform. “No one’s going to hurt you,” he said quietly. “I’ve got you now.”


End file.
